


Failed Garden

by Cant_We_Just_Dance



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: Angst, Child Loss, F/M, Implied Death, Loss, Miscarriage, Self-Hatred, Trying For A Baby, graveyards, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-19 12:25:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18969262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cant_We_Just_Dance/pseuds/Cant_We_Just_Dance
Summary: They tried and tried and tried.But no life grows in the underground.





	Failed Garden

**Author's Note:**

> Please read the tags! This is a sensitive topic, and I don't want anyone to be triggered. 
> 
> Please know that the way Persephone describes her experience is not how I view mothers who have experienced this, it's just a character experiencing self-hate.

Ma always said that things got easier with time.

Ma was usually right, about most things. When Persephone had whined about her wrists being sore after hours of pulling phyllo dough, Ma had promised that her hands would be strong enough, one day. The next cool day, under the shade of the largest tree they could find, her body wasn’t as pained.

It had been this way for a very long time.

‘After a while, you’ll be tall enough to pick the apples, dear,’ She had said, pressing a sticky-wet kiss to her forehead. Ma was right. ‘The more you try, the easier it will be to weave the top of your pie,’ She has informed her daughter in the kitchen. Ma was right.

Ma didn’t prepare her for this, though. It made sense, in some morbid, awful sort of way. They hadn’t been very close since she became a queen in her own right. Persephone gained a crown and lost a mother. At that point, she was still a girl. A woman old enough to make decisions, yes, but still with much left to learn.

Persephone didn’t mind that her Ma stopped pulling phyllo dough with her. She did it in the winter, now. Ma stopped walking her to the train station, which made sense. She didn’t care much for Hades. Persephone supposed that if Ma ever were to talk about her childhood, she wouldn’t mention much of her eldest brother. Why would she? The woman had always harbored resentment for him, grown stronger by his taking of her only daughter.

The Fates were cruel, awful women, and if she had any say, Persephone would have crushed their eye beneath the heel of her boot. Cake it in dust and leave in in the road. 

Persephone sat alone in their bed. The blankets were curled around her tightly, like how Ma had tucked her in as a child. Irony was cruel. Her body still ached from earlier, and she knew she would have to leave the bed eventually. She wiped a wet curl from her forehead. Hades had left, soon after it happened. He always left, after. 

She knew full well that she could find him in her failed gardens. The ones she had first tried to grow, when their marriage was new. They had never taken down the trellises for her snap peas, or the poles for the grapes to weave up. They had different purposes, now.

Ma wasn’t very kind, when she spoke of Hades. More than once she had brought up the topic of grandchildren, and bemoaned her lack of babes to hold and smother with affection. She would poke fun at Hades. Ask if the lack of children was from a dead libido. Or perhaps if the king of the dead was incapable of creating life, even with the goddess of spring.

Persephone always shut her down, when she heard her ma saying those awful things. It was more for her own sake than for her husband’s. Miscarriages were the fault of the mother. The stupid, selfish woman who couldn’t do what half the mortals managed.

When she lost their first babe, she hadn’t even had time to tell her husband.

She had collapsed onto the bathroom floor while Hades was out in the mines. Persephone would love running her fingers through his coal-dusted hair, most nights. The life draining from her got a bit in the way of that.

He had come home and picked her up from the cold tile. It took only a few moments for the pipes to groan as hot water rushed into her bathtub. Hades had never been a man of the fates. He didn’t trust them, and even if he did, he was wise enough to know that consulting them only brought false promises from thorned words. That night, however, as he held her in his arms as she sobbed, Persephone knew he wanted to ask. She knew that her husband wanted to ask if she would make it through the night. He wanted to know why they had been chosen. Whether or not she could hold life again. If she ever could.

That had been millenia ago. 

Somehow, it still hurt.

Why did it still have to hurt?

She shrugged off the sheets and the shame and left the bed. Persephone wrapped a shawl round her bare shoulders, not bothering to put shoes on. She padded barefoot through the halls and past the windows that only let darkness filter through.

Hades knew that his wife stood behind him, in their failed little garden. He did not turn, and he did not falter in his movements. He never did. His hands moved in a steady motion, flowing as though through water. Every few moments he would pause, before repeating the motions. Over and over and over again, until Persephone put her hand on his shoulder and knelt down beside him.

“It’s not going to work,” She whispered, voice hoarse and yet the words still coming out all too clearly for her taste. “It never does. It was only a few weeks, this time. Not as long as some of the others. They didn’t have shades, yet. This one won’t.”

“Let an old man have some hope, will you?” He laughed, in that cold, broken laugh that was so distinctly him. Hades leaned his head against her hand.

She leaned back against him, too. Her head rested on his shoulder, and after a moment, she pulled her shawl around the both of them.

“We can try again next fall,” Persephone stated, knowing that her husband wouldn’t have much to say in response. Her eyes rested over the failed garden of theirs, where they buried all the life they had failed to bring into the world. She took in a breath. Persephone was an old woman, now, nearly as old as her Ma had been when she was born. Her body was giving out. Knees buckled under the weight of standing up, and eyes strained to read the finer print woven into tapestries. It would take a long time for her awful, cursed womb to hold a baby close enough that it would stick around. It would take an awful long time. “Wait for me?”

“I will.”


End file.
